Articles by M
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Why International Law Is Crucial for Human Wellbeing
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Feb 2020
If we are attentive to current events, as the media reports war/peace issues we would quickly conclude that invoking international law in these high profile settings is to be out of touch with how sovereign states go about pursuing their most important economic and political interests, which in areas touching on security is by trusting their defensive capabilities and alliance relations, and not by believing that as long as their actions and policies stay on the right side of the law, they have nothing to worry about.
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The Art of the Deal, Pentagon-Style: Wars without Victories, Weapons without End
William J. Astore | TomDispatch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
4 Feb 2020 – The Self-Defeating Military – But there is a “war” that the military-industrial complex truly is winning handily, even overwhelmingly, and that’s the one for money and power within and across American society. Put differently, when it comes to winning hearts and minds, the military fails spectacularly overseas but succeeds brilliantly here in the “homeland.”
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(Castellano) Los humanos aman la violencia: Gandhi y el Foro Económico Mundial
Robert Burrowes, Ph.D. | Pressenza – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
Al conmemorar el 72º aniversario del asesinato de Mohandas K. Gandhi ocurrido el 30 de enero de 1948. Como él, que hilaba los paños de su propia ropa, señaló hace más de 100 años: «La Tierra provee lo suficiente para las necesidades de cada persona, pero no para la codicia de cada persona». Esto es algo que los asistentes al Foro Económico Mundial no pueden entender ya que están demasiado dañados psicológicamente. ¿Y tú?
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Deconstructing the Deal: A Breakdown of Trump’s Plan
Chloé Benoist, Mohamed Hassan and Daniel Hilton | Middle East Eye – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
29 Jan 2020 – After a two-year wait for Donald Trump’s Middle East plan to address the Israel-Palestine conflict – framed by the businessman-turned-president as a deal – we now know what it contains. What is proposed exactly and what remains unclear?
→ read full articleLearn about the Novel Coronavirus
World Health Organization (WHO) – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
31 Jan 2020 – What do you know about the novel Coronavirus that is causing a health emergency? Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). A novel coronavirus (nCoV) is a new strain that has not been previously identified in humans. Watch this short video to find out more.
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Our Collective Survival
Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
5 Feb 2020 – I have never become more worried than now about the future. Here I speak not just of the future of the 13 million Palestinians (7.5 million refugees or displaced) but the future of humanity as a whole. Let me just list nine factors that makes you pose and wonder.
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Trump/Netanyahu Diplomacy: Orientalism by any Other Name
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
1 Feb 2020 – This so-called contribution to ‘peace’ requires Palestine to give up its most fundamental rights, and accept a permanent condition of subjugation and victimization. It is framed in such a one-sided pro-Israel manner as if designed to ensure its instant and overwhelming rejection by Palestinian government representatives and by Palestinian public opinion.
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The United States of America’s Doll House: A Vast Tapestry of Lies and Illusions
Edward Curtin | Behind the Curtain – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
3 Feb 2020 – While truth-tellers Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning sit inside jail cells and Edward Snowden lives in exile in Russia, the American people hole up in an illusionary dwelling constructed to reduce them to children afraid of the truth. Or is it the dark? It has become a more sophisticated haunted doll’s house, an electronic one with many bells and whistles and images that move faster than the eye can see. We now inhabit a digital technological nightmare controlled by government and corporate forces intent on dominating every aspect of people’s lives.
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Curbing the Coronavirus–While Targeting China
Chandra Muzaffar | JUST – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
4 Feb 2020 – We are inundated with an avalanche of information on the novel coronavirus infection. Within this avalanche, there is a lot of “news” that is clearly false.
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Mysterious Complementarity between Capitalism and Arsenalism
Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
10 Feb 2020 – The discourse between those in favour of capitalism and those critical of it is now a characteristic of those concerned with social progress in general. The criticism of alternatives variously proposed could be said to follow a similar pattern. Both “sides” are comfortable with their understanding of the appropriateness of their own perspective and the dangerously misinformed inefficacy of the other — readily extended to framing what is opposed as fundamentally “evil”.
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Why NATO Doesn’t Target Russia? Nepal Is the New Enemy, Stupid!
Jan Oberg | The Transnational – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
4 Feb 2020 – About 37,000 soldiers from 18 countries are to participate in the U.S.-run manoeuver dubbed Defender Europe 2020 in May and June. And just how do they get away with deceiving the world with their militarised mantra about stability, security and peace – no matter it is always about more weapons and offensive military strength – virtually without any important (if they are) mainstream media reporting it, not to mention ask questions about it?
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US Deploys New Low-Yield Nuclear Submarine Warhead
William M. Arkin and Hans M. Kristensen | Federation of American Scientists – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
29 Jan 2020 – The US Navy has now deployed the new W76-2 low-yield Trident nuclear submarine warhead. Each W76-2 is estimated to have an explosive yield of about five kilotons. The remaining 18 missiles on each submarine like the Tennessee carry either the 90-kiloton W76-1 or the 455-kiloton W88. Each missile can carry up to eight warheads under current loading configurations.
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Coronavirus Emergency: Here’s What We Know So Far
UN News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
A new strain of coronavirus (officially named 2019-nCoV), which has caused respiratory diseases in China, and spread to at least 23 other countries, has been declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization. Here are the basic facts you need to know about the virus (figures correct as of Feb 3 2020).
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Erich Fromm’s 6 Rules of Listening: The Great Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist on the Art of Unselfish Understanding
Maria Popova | Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
“Understanding and loving are inseparable. If they are separate, it is a cerebral process and the door to essential understanding remains closed.”
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The Psychiatric Drug-Induced Suicide of Robin Williams–Six Years Later
Gary G. Kohls, MD | Duty to Warn – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
And the Perils of Being a Drugged-Up Insomniac Celebrity Who Gets Sucked into Mainstream Psychiatric Care – The Parallel Paths of Artistic Geniuses like Hemingway, Robin Williams, Michael Jackson and Prince – 59 years ago (July 2, 1961) an American literary icon, Ernest Hemingway, committed suicide after being discharged from a psychiatric ward at the Mayo Clinic.
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‘Try to Stop Me’ – The Mantra of Our Leaders Who Are Now Ruling with Impunity
George Monbiot – The Guardian,
10 Feb 2020
5 Feb 2020 – Trump, Bolsonaro, Modi, Johnson. Across the world, flouting the law has become normalised. We have to stop it. It is not a sufficient condition for fascism to take root, but it is a necessary one: the willingness of political leaders not only to break the law but to revel in breaking it is a fatal step towards the replacement of democracy with authoritarian terror.
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Libya Is Being Torn Apart by Outsiders
Vijay Prashad | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
4 Feb 2020 – Six years after the catastrophic NATO war on Libya, it remains a country torn into shreds: two governments in place—one in Tripoli and one in Tobruk—and a civil war that has too many factions to name; several foreign countries intervene for their own narrow ends making peace impossible. Last year, it became clear that the already chaotic Libya would slip into disaster.
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The American Life Is Killing You
Erik Rittenberry | Medium – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
1 Feb 2020 – We the people of the United States have been led far away from the vibrant American spirit of Emerson, Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. As Thoreau well understood, “Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” We prize HAVING over BEING, material possessions over experiences. We have contempt for nature these days and are too engrossed in the mechanical ways of living to truly FEEL what it means to be alive on this planet.
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Figures of Thought
Howard Nemerov – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
To lay the logarithmic spiral on
Sea-shell and leaf alike, and see it fit,
To watch the same idea work itself out…
(Português) Curta-metragem com Joaquin Phoenix aborda queimadas na Amazônia e Austrália
Giovanna de Castro - ANDA Agência de Notícias de Direitos Animais,
10 Feb 2020
No filme, o ator é um médico que luta para salvar o planeta Terra à beira de um colapso.
→ read full articleA Rationale for Unbounded Organization: A Path to Positive Peace
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
This is a proposal for a pragmatic, functional and realistic framework for talking, thinking and building institutions.
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Biological Weapons: A Useful and Timely Factual Overview
Larry Romanoff | Global Research – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
7 Feb 2020 – The US government and its many agencies and educational and health institutions have for many decades conducted intensive research into biological warfare, in many cases strongly focused on race-specific pathogens.
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(Português) Djokovic: “Atribuo grande parte do meu sucesso à minha dieta”
David Arioch | Vegazeta – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
30 Jan 2020 – Djokovic já havia revelado que se sente mais saudável, com mais energia, dorme melhor e se recupera melhor desde que adotou uma dieta á base de plantas.
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Making the Earth Charter Happen: A Necessary Utopia
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
7 Feb 2020 – Twenty years ago Kamla Chowdhry, one of the founding members of the Earth Charter Commission asked, “How can we ensure that ethical and spiritual values get a fair hearing with the economist, technologist, and the industrialist? How do we weld economics with ethics, and have a technology with a human face?” Answering those questions remains central to our efforts today for a more just, sustainable and peaceful world.
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Analysis of Violence for Peacebuilders: Galtung’s Triangle
The Peacebuilding Practitioner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
A conflict analysis is a nonnegotiable first step when preparing a conflict transformation and peacebuilding intervention. Understanding violence is part and parcel of this initial assessment. Johan Galtung’s Triangle is a simple yet powerful tool to get a better understanding about the types of violence influencing the situation. This video explains how it can be used.
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Three Extraordinary Australian Journalists: Burchett, Pilger & Assange
Rick Sterling – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
7 Feb 2020 – Australia has produced extraordinary journalists across three generations: Wilfred Burchett (deceased in 1983), John Pilger (80 years old but still active) and Julian Assange (48 years old, currently in London’s Belmarsh prison). They were all rebels and all international. They all depended on freedom of the press which is now at stake.
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The House of the Rising Sun (Music Video of the Week)
The Animals – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
Classic from 1964 – Song with meaning…
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AI And Predictive Justice in Our Courts: Paying Heed to Exigencies of the Responsibilities and the Risks
Dr Jaspal Kaur Sadhu Singh | JUST – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
5 Feb 2020 – The point of this exercise was to determine whether the judge was more precise judging the accused as “high risk” or whether the machine would be a better judge of that. The machine won, man lost. The steps taken to introduce Artificial Intelligence in the administration of justice is commendable. However, on the backfoot of the challenges of predictive justice, we cannot defend to the hilt its efficiency and shrug our responsibilities without a tenable assessment of the risks.
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Fragmented Society
Alberto Binder | Opinion Sur – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
13 Jan 2020 – We want to demonstrate a complex phenomenon that produces the “fragmentation” of most social groups that are treated and treat each other as “discriminated minorities,” that measures or makes it difficult the “constitution” of a “majority” and, thus, produces the political effect of making those majorities have an absolute impossibility of acquiring political hegemony and little possibility of producing social policies.
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The Doctrine of Just War: Just That, War! (Or more War than Just)
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
War as an institution to resolve conflict is an abomination, like slavery and colonialism as institutions. Occasional war, slavery and colonialism are probably hard to eliminate. But the key word is institution, legitimized by social norms and mores. A doctrine of just war is designed to do exactly that, offer a legitimation, for instance by seeing the evil of war as something that can be outweighed by possible positive consequences.
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Turning Despair into Hope
Boaventura de Sousa Santos | Human Wrongs Watch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
30 Jan 2020 – Toward a new Universal Declaration of Human Rights – Human rights have ceased to be a conditionality in the context of international relations; individuals and peoples have, at best, been reduced to objects of human rights rhetoric. The global social division of fear and hope is so unequal that a number of phenomena that used to be unthinkable less than thirty years ago now strike us as being the ordinary features of a new normal.
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From Colonization to Kleptocracy: A History of Angola and Isabel dos Santos
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
5 Feb 2020 – Our visual explainer shows you how Africa’s richest woman rose amid a country divided by war and rich in natural resources. Born in 1973 in Azerbaijan, Isabel is the only child of José Eduardo dos Santos, then an exiled guerrilla fighter, and Tatiana Kukanova, a Russian, whom the future Angolan president met while studying petroleum engineering at the Azerbaijan Oil Academy in Baku. The marriage didn’t last, and Isabel was raised by her mother, spending some time in Luanda and her teen and young-adult years in London, where she attended the exclusive St. Paul’s girls’ school.
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Crisis and Opportunity: The ‘Deal of the Century’ Challenge for Palestinians
Ramzy Baroud | Politics for the People – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
5 Feb 2020 – After several postponements, US President, Donald Trump, has finally revealed the details of his Middle East plan, dubbed ‘Deal of the Century’, in Washington on Jan 28. Standing triumphantly beside Trump was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is the Palestinian leadership’s greatest challenge. Will it move forward with a Palestinian-centric strategy or persist in the same place, regurgitating old language and reminiscing of the good old days?
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Coronavirus: UN Health Agency Moves Fast to Tackle ‘Infodemic’; Guterres Warns against Stigmatization
UN News – TRANSCEND Media Servie,
10 Feb 2020
4 Feb 2020 – The World Health Organization has taken steps to ensure that the coronavirus epidemic that has claimed hundreds of lives in central China does not spark a dangerous social media “infodemic” fuelled by false information.
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Japan Races to Build New Coal-Burning Power Plants, Despite the Climate Risks
Hiroko Tabuchi – The New York Times,
10 Feb 2020
3 Feb 2020 – It is one unintended consequence of the Fukushima nuclear disaster almost a decade ago, which forced Japan to all but close its nuclear power program. Japan now plans to build as many as 22 new coal-burning power plants — one of the dirtiest sources of electricity — at 17 different sites in the next five years, just at a time when the world needs to slash carbon dioxide emissions to fight global warming.
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Gandhi: The First Peace Journalist
Steven Youngblood | The Peace Journalist – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
6 Feb 2020 – When asked to describe Mahatma Gandhi, most would say he was an Indian independence leader, human rights defender, and spiritual guide. However, “People don’t think of him as a journalist” even though “he was a journalist from an early age, and died as a journalist.”
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Times Gone By and the Contemporary World: Role of Religion
Ravi P Bhatia – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
In the complex modern society of today there are wars, terrorism, violence and billions of dollars being spent on manufacture, sale, and distribution of deadly weapons. There is also poverty, inequality, loneliness and isolation on a social level. My feeling is that perhaps religion will offset the cruelty, isolation of the modern world and usher in peace, harmony, love and caring for each other in this unequal world.
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Who’s a Big Boy Now?
Joe Kandra and Kathie Malley-Morrison | Engaging Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
Sigh!
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Trump, Racism, and Fascism – More than Just Personality Disorders
Roger D. Harris – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
Trump has been reprehensible in pandering to white racism. But the Republicans have no monopoly on this franchise. We should remember the legacy of Jim Crow and Dixiecrat Democrats in high office including six US senators and two Supreme Court justices who were members of the Ku Klux Klan. FDR, arguably the most liberal US president and a Democrat, force relocated and incarcerated in concentration camps 120,000 Japanese Americans, including orphaned children and people with as little as 1/16th Japanese ancestry.
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Trump and Netanyahu Dictate Terms of Palestinian Surrender to Israel and Call It Peace
Robert Mackey – The Intercept,
10 Feb 2020
29 Jan 2020 – Donald Trump unveiled “a vision for peace,” which permits Israel to annex much of the occupied West Bank, offering the Palestinians only limited autonomy.
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Expiration of New START Means Nuclear Chaos
Global Zero – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
5 Feb 2020 – On February 5, 2021, just one year from today, the last remaining nuclear pact between the United States and Russia will expire – ending more than a half century of arms control between the two most nuclear-armed nations on the planet. The 2010 New START agreement is the last remaining restraint on both nations’ strategic nuclear arsenals.
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Trump Attempting to Consolidate the Balfour Declaration
Askiah Adam | JUST – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
3 Feb 2020 – That Palestinians are already protesting against the Vision is a clear signal that the people are far from enthusiastic despite the attempt to bribe them with US$50 billion over ten years to develop the Palestinian economy and rebuild its infrastructure destroyed by Israeli bombing. One million jobs are promised. Iran is clearly against it. Russia’s negative attitude to Trump’s deal is no secret.
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UN Rapporteur Nils Melzer Exposes British Government Attempts to Obstruct His Defence of Assange
Oscar Grenfell | WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
5 Feb 2020 – At a meeting in London’s St. Pancras New Church on Monday [3 Feb] night, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer provided new information about the efforts of the British government and the establishment media to hinder his defence of imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Melzer revealed he had “been asking the BBC for an interview for nine months.” He had offered to appear on the “Hard Talk” program to discuss Assange’s case, but had been rebuffed with the claim that it would not be “newsworthy.”
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Can the U.S. and Iran Avoid a Disastrous Collision?
Prabir Purkayastha | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
3 Feb 2020 – Russia and China have limited capacity to beat the U.S. sanctions. So has India, the other big buyer of Iranian oil. All countries have problems in paying Iran except through barter deals. This is impossible in the modern era without duplicating the existing global financial infrastructure independent of the United States. The U.S. exercises a stranglehold on the world’s financial structure, and this gives the U.S. sanctions international teeth.
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Goodbye to All That: The UK after Brexit
John Feffer | Foreign Policy In Focus – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
5 Feb 2020 – If I were the EU, I’d be wiping my hands, sighing in relief, and slamming the door after the UK’s long-delayed departure. Britain had been a noisy, pushy houseguest for 47 years, and it was only growing ruder. Even as it steps out the door it’s trying to negotiate the terms: all rights with no responsibilities. Brexit could see the UK eventually lose Scotland, Northern Ireland, and a great deal of its prosperity.
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Mexico’s President AMLO Shows How It’s Done
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
8 Feb 2020 – While U.S. advocates and local politicians struggle to get their first public banks chartered, Mexico’s new president has begun construction on 2,700 branches of a government-owned bank to be completed in 2021, when it will be the largest bank in the country. At a press conference on Jan. 6, he said the neoliberal model had failed; private banks were not serving the poor and people outside the cities, so the government had to step in.
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U.S. Marches toward Police State amid Cheers!
James Albertini | Malu 'Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
4 Feb 2020 – Impeached U.S. President, Donald J. Trump, gave his 1 hour and 18 minute “State of the Union” speech today. And they cheered and they cheered! They cheered – Republicans and Democrats alike, when Trump spoke about his regime change campaigns against Cuba, Venezuela and other countries. They cheered when Trump introduced CIA Venezuela coup puppet man, Juan Guaido. They cheered when Trump boasted about spending $2.2 TRILLION on the U.S. military in the 3 years since he became president… (Read on)
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Portuguese Whistleblower Named as Leaker behind Isabel dos Santos Leaks
James Badcock – The Telegraph,
3 Feb 2020
27 Jan 2020 – A Portuguese whistleblower has claimed responsibility for leaked files that allegedly implicate Isabel dos Santos, the billionaire daughter of the former Angolan president, in murky international business deals. Lawyers for Rui Pinto today claimed he was behind the so-called “Luanda Leaks” and likened him to the whistleblower Edward Snowden.
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Trump Lifts Restrictions on US Landmine Use
BBC News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
31 Jan 2020 – US President Donald Trump has lifted restrictions on the deployment of anti-personnel landmines by American military forces. The decision reverses a 2014 Obama administration ban on the use of such weapons. The Trump administration said Mr Obama’s policy could put US troops “at a severe disadvantage”.
→ read full article(Français) Pourquoi le budget militaire gonflé menace de faire tomber l’empire américain
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
1 fév. 2020 – Le budget militaire américain n’est pas payé par les bénéfices des exportations américaines. En fait, les États-Unis importent régulièrement plus qu’ils n’exportent et accusent un déficit qui, pour l’année 2019, était supérieur à un billion de dollars. Comme nous l’avons vu, le budget militaire en représente près de 75%.
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The Decline of International Law: Reflections of a True Believer
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
27 Jan 2020 – There is widespread agreement that international law is experiencing a sharp decline in relevance when it comes to foreign policy, especially in the eye of the public. At first glance, this seems surprising. The impression of decline derives from high profile issues of governments acting without regard for international law, especially in the area of peace and security.
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Climate Change Means Lifestyle Change
John Scales Avery – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
28 Jan 2020 – The nonviolent tradition of Shelly, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela is international. Culture is cooperative. It is not competitive. Global cultural cooperation can lead us to a sustainable and peaceful society. Our almost miraculous modern communications media, if properly used, can give us a stable, prosperous and cooperative future society. A New Freely Downloadable Book
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The Disaster of Utopian Engineering
Chris Hedges | Truthdig – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
28 Jan 2020 – Neoliberalism, the latest utopian project, aims at concentrating wealth in the hands of the few while reducing the many to peonage.
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On the Eve of the Release of Trump’s ‘Deal–Farce of the Century’
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
28 Jan 2020 – Interview by Rodrigo Craveiro from the Brazilian daily Correio Braziliense –
Craveiro: Why are Palestinian leaders rejecting to talk with president Trump about this new peace plan?
CIA Used Prisoner as ‘Training Prop’ for Torture, Psychologist Testifies
Sacha Pfeiffer | NPR – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
23 Jan 2020 – A man accused of helping finance the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was subjected to “excessive” abuse at the hands of CIA interrogators who used him as a training tool for employees learning the agency’s torture techniques, according to testimony from James Mitchell , the psychologist who helped design the torture program.
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China Completes Emergency Hospital in 9 Days for Virus Outbreak
teleSUR – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
2 Feb 2020 – China completed today work on the emergency Huoshenshan Hospital, set up to tackle the new coronavirus outbreak in its epicenter in Wuhan. The 1,000-bed hospital, which has an area of 34,000 square meters, was officially delivered to military medics.
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Trump Plan Will ‘Finish Off Palestinian Cause’, PM Warns
Al Jazeera News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
Trump on Monday [27 Jan] held separate meetings with right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his election rival, Benny Gantz, in Washington, DC over his long-delayed proposal that has been kept secret. “We reject it and we demand the international community not be a partner to it because it contradicts the basics of international law and inalienable Palestinian rights,” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said.
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No Bullets Spent (Music Video of the Week)
Spoon – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
(Lyric Video)
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US Space Force Logo Draws Comparisons to ‘Star Trek’
AFP – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
25 Jan 2020 – Trump unveiled the logo of Space Force yesterday. It drew immediate mockery among social media users. The logo bears an uncanny resemblance to the insignia of Starfleet — the peacekeeping and exploration force of the United Federation of Planets alliance, which is headquartered on Earth whose adversaries include Klingons and Romulans.
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China’s Virus Response Has Been ‘Breathtaking’
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
3 Feb 2020
30 Jan 2020 – Chinese scientists have already handed over to Russian counterparts the virus genome, with snap tests able to identify it in a human body within two hours. A Russia-China vaccine is under development.
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‘Good’ Deeds?
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
A scout master asked three little scouts what good deed they had done today. The first one replied, “I helped an old lady cross the street.”
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The Imminent Threat of Trump and the Value of Progressive Third Parties
Roger D. Harris – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
29 Jan 2020 – As predictable as death and taxes is the quadrennial injunction from liberals for progressive third parties to cease and desist. Trump is the hook; the Dems are the bait. Don’t swallow it and get reeled in by the two-party duopoly. A better world is possible.
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At Guantánamo Bay, Torture Apologists Take Refuge in Empty Code Words and Euphemisms
Margot Williams – The Intercept,
3 Feb 2020
29 Jan 2020 – These phrases are used: “intelligence requirements,” “abusive drift,” “countermeasures to resistance,” “Pavlovian response,” “learned helplessness,” “negative reinforcement,” “conditioning strategy,” a chart of “moral disengagement.” Torturers used a technique known as “walling,” in which a detainee is thrown against a wall that is described as “safe” because it is made of plywood and constructed to have “bounce.” When walling was used, a beach towel was protectively wrapped around the prisoner’s neck and later became a “Pavlovian” tool that the detainee could be shown to remind him of the suffering he’d endured. This is how torturers speak, cloaking their actions in anodyne language.
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Martyrs’ Day: The Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi
Ravi Bhatia – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
January 30 1948 was a momentous day for India. This was the day when Gandhiji was assassinated by a Hindu bigot. He practiced nonviolence but the country was torn into two nations with millions of people killed in the aftermath of this freedom from colonial rule. Although Gandhi preached and practiced NV (Nonviolence) his death was brought about by violence. Does that minimize or negate the concept of NV?
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Interview with Football Leaks Whistleblower Rui Pinto ‘This Football Mafia Is Everywhere’
Nino Seidel and Michael Wulzinger – Der Spiegel,
3 Feb 2020
2 Jan 2019 – In an interview, Rui Pinto, the Portuguese young man who kept the industry in suspense over revelations from Football Leaks, discusses his life in anonymity, the explosive power of his documents and accusations that he is a hacker.
“I am not a hacker, I am a whistleblower.” – Rui Pinto
Nobel Peace Prize 2020 – Shortlist Sent to the Committee
Fredrik S. Heffermehl - The Nobel Peace Prize Watch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
Oslo, 3 Feb 2020 – Our annual screening of candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize has now been posted on our website and sent to the Nobel committee. We have found 30 of the known candidates qualified and eligible, within the purpose of Nobel´s will.
→ read full articleFaiths, Religions and Peace
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
A cruel choice between a transcendent, fundamentalist God claiming universal validity as the only one, and immanent gods-as-substance, dwelling in all, extending to other groups? Evidently, the soft side must be strengthened. The problem is, how? By conscious dialogue, within, not only between the religions.
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Worst Locust Swarm to Hit East Africa in Decades Linked to Climate Crisis
Olivia Rosane | EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
27 Jan 2020 – East Africa is facing its worst locust infestation in decades, and the climate crisis is partly to blame. The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization said that Ethiopia and Somalia had not seen a swarm this bad in 25 years, while Kenya was facing its largest infestation in 70 years.
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How the ‘Venice of Africa’ Is Losing Its Battle against the Rising Ocean
Monika Pronczuk – The Guardian,
3 Feb 2020
28 Jan 2020 – Saint-Louis, the old colonial capital of Senegal, faces a flooding threat that has already seen entire villages lost to the Atlantic.
→ read full article2020: Deepening the Clarification
Editorial | Opinion Sur – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
13 Jan 2020 – Understanding what happens requires passing through information barriers that real power establishes to ignore or obscure facts; they only inform about what is functional to their interests. But that is not enough, we also need to work on our capacity for interpreting what happens because they have colonized our minds brutally, formatting subjectivities to numb and tie down free wills.
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Maneuvering Hell for Our Advantage
Robert C. Koehler | Common Wonders – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
29 Jan 2020 – When the mainstream media writes about war, even critically, the image that often comes to mind for me is an infant wrapped in plastic. That infant is naked reality, a.k.a., the present moment, suffocating and screaming for its life; the plastic smothering it are the journalistic euphemisms by which murder and terrorism turn into abstract acts of national necessity.
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(Português) De onde vêm os golfinhos dos parques aquáticos?
David Arioch | Vegazeta – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
Depois de capturados, os golfinhos são enviados para os intermediários e depois vendidos para empresas que os exploram como entretenimento para turistas. Aqueles que morrem durante a captura são vendidos como carne para consumo.
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Growth
Posted by Antonio C. S. Rosa | Editor - TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
YES!
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On Trust
Reader’s Digest – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
Upon finding a clearly plagiarized paper, I called the student into my office.
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Why the Bloated Military Budget Threatens to Bring Down the American Empire
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
1 Feb 2020 – The American military budget is not paid from the profits of American exports. In fact the US regularly imports more than it exports and runs a deficit which for the year 2019 was more than $1 trillion dollars. As we have seen the military budget accounts for almost 75% of this.
→ read full articleUkraine: Welcome to Latin America! European Geopolitics and Revolution
Juan Eugenio Corradi | Opinion Sur – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
12 Jan 2020 – Between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, Ukraine can become a banana republic. Only Europe is capable of a serious and responsible strategic attitude. For that, it has an historic example that, bridging the gap, can be useful: Finland. But also it is possible that the ongoing revolution in various parts of the world gets ahead of all the models.
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Trump’s ‘Peace and Prosperity Map’—Scam of the Century
Mazin Qumsiyeh – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
29 Jan 2020 – The latest “scam” does achieve Israeli complete annexation of the USA government and will result in more suffering (already >100,000 Palestinians killed and >800,000 injured by this zionist colonialism). A war on Iran is not far off. But now more US citizens will join our struggle against the Zionist double colonization (of the US and Palestine).
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The Outbreaks of both the Wuhan Coronavirus and SARS Likely Started in Chinese Wet Markets
Aylin Woodward | Business Insider – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
1 Feb 2020 – The coronavirus spreading in China and the SARS outbreak of 2003 both are from the coronavirus family, and both likely started in wet markets. At such markets, outdoor stalls are squeezed together to form narrow lanes and put people and live and dead animals — dogs, chickens, pigs, snakes, civets, and more — in constant close contact. That makes it easy for a virus to jump from animal to human.
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Who Will Defend the Defenseless?
Amos Gvirtz – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
28 Jan 2020 – Throughout Israel’s existence its various governments have regarded members of Israel’s Bedouin population as undesirable citizens: after initially expelling most of them from the country, the state concentrated those that remained in the Sayag area and after that in townships. It is generally assumed that citizenship offers protection to citizens. But what happens when citizenship withholds protection? Where is the civil rights movement in Israel? Where are the civil rights movements in the rest of the world?
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(Português) Engodo: Indústria de pele cria campanha para mascarar sofrimento animal
Giovanna de Castro - ANDA Agência de Notícias de Direitos Animais,
3 Feb 2020
2 fev 2020 – Um dos locais onde ocorrem os maus-tratos mais cruéis são em fazendas de pele onde animais são mantidos em gaiolas minúsculas, sem alimento, sob intenso estresse psicológico a ponto de se mutilarem e praticarem canibalismo. Os recintos são repletos de sujeira, fezes, urina e cadáveres de outros animais e isso é apenas a ponta do iceberg.
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(Italiano) Ciao, Bella. Per Ida Désandré, COMPAGNA e Hoffnungsträgerin
Silvia Berruto – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
2 Feb 2020 – attraverso Ciao, Bella
un omaggio collettivo
alla compagna Ida Désandré
deportata politica, donna, amica e maestra
con le intellettuali e gli intellettuali
le amiche e gli amici di sempre
Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ Won’t Bring Peace – That Was the Plan
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
29 Jan 2020 – The White House has discarded the traditional US pose as an “honest broker” between Israel and the Palestinians. Palestinian leaders were not invited to the ceremony. This was a deal designed in Tel Aviv more than in Washington. The proposal deliberately includes a host of unrealisable preconditions before what remains of Palestine can be recognized.
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India’s Supreme Court Greenlights Modi Government’s Internet Shutdown in Kashmir
Wasantha Rupasinghe | WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
28 Jan 2020 – In a January 10 ruling, India’s Supreme Court gave Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government the greenlight to continue their now almost six-month long shutdown of internet access in Indian-administered Kashmir.
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From “Song of Myself”
Walt Whitman – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg
of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
Two Satellites Just Avoided a Head-On Smash. How Close Did They Come to Disaster?
Gregory Cohen | The Conversation – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
30 Jan 2020 – Two defunct satellites passed within metres of one another, prompting renewed focus on the dangers of space debris. But with many satellites treated as military secrets, how do we track the hazards?
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‘Deal of the Century’: America’s Most Generous Proposal to Israel
Motasem A Dalloul – Middle East Monitor,
3 Feb 2020
29 Jan 2020 – Israeli President Donald Trump has revealed his long-awaited peace plan aiming, as he claims, to bring a “precise technical solutions” for the Palestinians and the Israeli. Is this true? Let’s see! The premise of Trump’s plan is mainly based on giving Israel as much land as possible at the expense of the Palestinians and affording full protection for a “Jewish state” at the expense of the sovereignty, dignity and quality of Palestinian life.
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Perception and Practices of Instructors’ Training
Shree Prasad Devkota – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
Perception and Practices of Instructors’ Training: A Case Study by Shiba Bagale, Cook Communication, 30 January, 2020, USA, 136 pp. – The research book is about the instructor’s perception about the training that they have participated and practices after the training.
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BJP Government Catch (BGC)
S. P. Udayakumaran, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
30 Jan 2020 – ‘To watch,’ is a surveillance activity, a preventive measure that we undertake before or even as a thief or criminal creeps in. The present BJP dispensation under Narendra Modi and Amit Sha has been here for almost six years and is poised to be here legally at least for the next four years. Once a thief or criminal has crept in, we try not only to watch, but also to catch. So I propose setting up a “BJP Government Catch” now. On the 72nd Martyrs’ Day at the Gandhi Mandapam in Kanyakumari, India
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The Far-Right Bolsonaro Movement Wants Us Dead. But We Will Not Give Up
Glenn Greenwald and David Miranda – The Guardian,
3 Feb 2020
29 Jan 2020 – Courage is contagious. Those are the people who inspire us and so many like us in Bolsonaro’s Brazil who are confronting state repression to defend the democracy that so many people suffered so much to bring about. Demagogues and despots like Bolsonaro are a dime a dozen. They centrally rely on intimidation, fear and the use of state repression to consolidate power. A refusal to give into that fear, but instead to join hands with those who intend to fight against it, is always the antidote to this toxin.
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Mahatma Gandhi on Conversion
Swami Aksharanandaji | Stephen Knapp (Sri Nandanandana dasa) – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
“I disbelieve in the conversion of one person by another. My effort should never to be to undermine another’s faith. This implies belief in the truth of all religions and, therefore, respect for them. It implies true humility.” (Young India: April 23, 1931)
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Private Equity Firm to Purchase the Assets of the .ORG Domain Registry for $1 Billion
Kevin Reed | WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
27 Jan 2020 – A public demonstration took place on 24 Jan in front of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to demand a halt to the sale of the .ORG domain registry to the private equity firm Ethos Capital for $1.135 billion. The conversion of .ORG into a for-profit is an attack on public access to news, information and digital media. Among the threats are higher domain registration fees, censorship-for-hire schemes, selling browsing data and diminished technical maintenance and support.
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How the Myth of the Alpha Male Has Hijacked Modern Masculinity
Lizzy Francis | Fatherly – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
14 Jan 2020 – In “Are Men Animals?” anthropologist Matthew Gutmann explores how modern ideas of masculinity repress and harm men.
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To Rob or Not to Rob?
Naresh Jotwani – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2020
Consider this simple “parlour game”. Pass a blank slip of paper to every person present in a group. Request each person to answer the following question anonymously on the slip provided. ‘An old, richly bejewelled lady is passing along a dimly-lit and lonely lane at night. A lone robber robbing all her jewellery would certainly not be recognized or caught. Out of a hundred adult citizens of the city, how many do you think will rob the old lady?’
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Contesting Nuclearism: Management or Transformation? An Urgent Challenge
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2020
22 Jan 2020 – This essay calls attention to the generally unappreciated tensions between managing nuclear weapons and eliminating them altogether. It stresses the crucial point that management inevitably produces a structure of ‘nuclear apartheid’ that is to some extent ‘legalized’ by way of the Nonproliferation Treaty of 1961, and depends for implementation, not on law, but on geopolitical muscle, including war. This geopolitical pattern of NPT enforcement has been mainly undertaken by the United States, but is generally supported by most of the other nuclear weapons states.
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Lives in Engineering
John Scales Avery – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2020
23 Jan 2020 – At present, history is taught as though power struggles were its most important aspect. Furthermore, the present teaching of history is indoctrination in nationalism. We need to reform our teaching of history so that the emphasis will be placed on the gradual growth of human culture and knowledge, a growth to which all nations and ethnic groups have contributed.
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(Italiano) L’arrivo dell’Apocalisse: tra una manciata di secondi…
Elena Camino | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2020
23 Gennaio 2020 – Il messaggio che oggi è stato comunicato ai governanti e alle società civili di tutto il mondo è drammatico: mancano 100 secondi a mezzanotte, l’umanità non è mai stata così vicina all’autodistruzione!
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The Business Party Syndicate
James McFadden | CounterPunch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2020
17 Jan 2020 – Each year Leftist Democrats, Socialists and Radicals are asked to hold their noses and vote for the lesser-of-two-evils. This is a false choice because we live in a rigged One-Party state – a plutocracy run by the Business Party, a Syndicate with Democratic and Republican wings. “Syndicate” is the proper word for our corrupt One-Party system.
→ read full articleNobel Peace Prize 2020–Nomination Info in English, Français, Deutsch, Русский, Castellano, Svenska–Deadline: 31 Jan
Fredrik S. Heffermehl | Nobel Peace Prize Watch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2020
Please nominate for the 2020 Nobel Prize – Information below in English, French, German, Russian, Castellano and Swedish
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(Italiano) Chiamata alle armi, la NATO mobilitata su due fronti
Manlio Dinucci | Il Manifesto – Centro Studi Sereno Regis,
27 Jan 2020
14 Gennaio 2020 – NATOME: così il presidente Trump, che si vanta del proprio talento nel creare acronimi, ha già battezzato lo spiegamento della Nato in Medio Oriente. La pianificazione della Defender Europe 20, precisa il Pentagono, resta però immutata. In altre parole, 30.000 soldati Usa si eserciteranno a difendere l’Europa da una aggressione russa, scenario che mai potrebbe verificarsi anche perché nello scontro si userebbero non carri armati ma missili nucleari.
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2020 Edelman Trust Barometer
Edelman Intelligence – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2020
19 Jan 2020 – The 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that despite a strong global economy and near full employment, none of the four societal institutions that the study measures—government, business, NGOs and media—is trusted.
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